With the advent of blogs, YouTube, podcasts, and online social media tools that allow anyone to publish anything they want within the law, everyone could become their own entertainment production company, putting the masses in charge of not only being the entertainment, but providing it.

With inexpensive video equipment and software, and an innate sense of comedy, drama, and style, Duke DesRochers has an intuitive way of bringing the “common man” into his audition video that I hope will gain the attention of the judges. It’s time to go back to the real people, rather than the exaggerated people, to find the humility and fun in entertainment. We need to get people thinking, “Hey, that’s me! I can do that!”

Another part of Duke DesRochers I want to celebrate with you is how he took two fairly diverse passions, and molded them into one specialty to totally redefine himself for this video audition for the Food Network: handyman in the kitchen.

As part of this ongoing series on Exploring Social Media, I want to talk a little more about the important points that Duke’s Food Network audition efforts brought up: getting personal and brand identity.

Social Media is About the Social

They key to social media is the personal. It’s about being personable, getting personal, and being a person – a real person.

Duke’s video could have been just like all the rest of the auditions for The Next Food Network Star. He could have dressed up pretty, made something pretty, been wacky and silly, exaggerated and dramatic. Instead, his video works because he is “every man” and we know him. He is our next door neighbor or relative.

And he’s a rule breaker without being a wacko. In the video, he uses common woodworking tools like the lathe and a drill to carve up vegetables into beautiful arrangements and dishes you can eat. He leaves the audience laughing but thinking, “I can do that!”

He’s accessible. He’s real.

As you establish your brand identity on the web through your blog and social media tools, it’s important that you remember to be real. To be accessible.

You want to attract people who are like you and think like you.

This doesn’t mean share your personal life. It means you have to be a real person, someone we can trust and feel like we know. The next version of the web and the economy is going to be the global village feel. We want to work with people we know and have a relationship with, not the stranger in another city.

The cute CB Radio handle name like “SEO Guru” or “Sexy Blogger Chick” doesn’t work any more. We want to know there is a real person behind the blog.

As mentioned in Exploring Social Media: It Starts With One, people want to talk to someone directly. They don’t want to talk to the “man behind the curtain.” They want direct access to those who can make things happen, people who listen and respond. People who are real. People who are just like them. People who understand.

Is your online identity in line with being a real person and not a brand? What are you hiding behind?

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